Blame me, not Bush, for allowing water torture, says ex-CIA lawyer

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George Bush took the blame for creating America’s notorious waterboarding interrogation regime even though he had no knowledge of what the CIA was doing to terror suspects, according to the intelligence agency’s former top lawyer.

John Rizzo, the senior counsel at the CIA throughout the war on terror, said Mr Bush’s account in his memoirs of signing off on waterboarding with an enthusiastic “damn right!” in an Oval Office meeting with the intelligence chief George Tenet, did not happen.

The former lawyer concludes that the President was either mistaken or, more likely, “he is trying to shoulder the burden, the